480 
pliistt's natural histoet. 
[Book X. 
Arabia ; though I am not quite sure that its existence is not 
all a fable. It is said that there is only one in existence in the 
whole world, and that that one has not been seen very often. 
We are told that this bird is of the size of an eagle," and 
has a brilliant golden plumage around the neck, while the rest 
of the body is of a purple colour ; except the tail, which is 
azure, with long feathers intermingled of a roseate hue ; the 
throat is adorned with a crest, and the head with a tuft of 
feathers. The first Eoman who described this bird, and who 
has done so with the greatest exactness, was the senator Ma- 
nilius, so famous for his learning ; which he owed, too, to the 
instructions of no teacher. He tells us that no person has 
ever seen this bird eat, that in Arabia it is looked upon as 
sacred to the sun, that it lives five hundred and forty years, 
that when it becomes old it builds a nest of cassia and sprigs 
of incense, which it fills with perfumes, and then lays its body 
down upon them to die ; that from its bones and marrow there 
springs at first a sort of small worm, which in time changes 
into a little bird : that the first thing that it does is to perform 
the obsequies of its predecessor, and to carry the nest entire 
to the city of the Sun near Panchaia,^^ and there deposit it 
upon the altar of that divinity. 
The same Manilius states also, that the revolution of the 
great year is completed with the life of this bird, and that 
11 Borrowed from Herodotus, B. ii. c. 73. 
12 The MSS. vary considerably as to the number. Some make it 540 
years, others 511, others 40, and others 560. 
13 Mentioned alsoj B. vii. c. 57, 
1* 532 years, according to Hardouin. Bailly says ; " The first men who 
studied the heavens remarked that the revolution of the sun brought back 
the seasons in the same order. They thought that they observed that cer- 
tain variations of the temperature depended upon the aspect of the moon, 
and attached different prognostics to the rising and setting of the stars, 
persuading themselves that the vicissitudes of things here below had regu- 
lated periods, like the movements of the heavenly bodies. From this arose 
the impression, that the same aspect, the same arrangement of all the stars, 
that had prevailed at the commencement of the world, would also attend 
its destruction ; and that the period of this long revolution was the predes- 
tined duration of the life of nature. Another impression was the idea that 
the world would only perish at this epoch to be born again, and for the 
same order of things to recommence with the same series of celestial phe- 
nomena. Some fixed this universal renovation at the conjunction of all the 
planets, others at the return of the stars to the same point of the ecliptic ; 
others, uniting these two kinds of revolutions, marked the term of the du- 
